Contemporary Fiction Books

Book SynopsisMorning brings new and old faces to Hai Ruo’s teashop. The premium leaves she sells to Xijing’s high society keep the doors open, however it’s her Sisterhood – a dozen glamorous confidants who visit daily to share tales of love, loss and professional success – that really keeps the shop running.From a returning Russian expat to a hotpot tycoon, they epitomise the new possibilities of this ancient metropolis. The group's rise in business and society is sometimes helped by Yi Guang, a noted writer with his own artistic demons. But with every deal struck and official bribed, a debt accumulates, jeopardising a hard-won but brittle autonomy.The gates of Hai’s establishment help keep the choking smog of the city at bay, and inside she provides a sanctuary for the friends to express their true selves. If only the tea leaves held all the answers. Instead, it’s up to the sisters to discover how far their bonds will really hold.Trade Review"…Jia Pingwa is meticulous as a miniaturist. Characters are lovingly flawed and human; they seem swept up in a wider ambivalence about the direction Chinese society is headed.""The translation by Nicky Harman and Jun Liu is lucid and thoughtful."-Ronán Hession, The Irish Times

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Book SynopsisWhen rumours spread of corruption, Mayor Li Gaocheng is determined to find the truth. However, a lifetime of steadfast service leaves him ill-equipped for this new China where there is nothing that money can't buy. As the web of deceit unravels, he must choose whether to investigate just how deep it goes even if what he finds hits close to home.

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Book SynopsisWhat good is a town without people? Wu Township is hollowing out. Our most capable sons and daughters have long since uprooted from their birthplace on the central plains to fuel China's economic miracle. The ancient trees now sit in the shade of a modern aqueduct, funnelling even our precious water to the metropolises beyond. From the marketplace where gossip is traded to the long-abandoned execution grounds, ordinary life carries on. For we who remain, feuds between neighbours compound the burdens shared by increasingly ageing shoulders. But If you know where to look, you'll find the town still clings to its customs and dreams. Let me show you around. If we're lucky, we'll run into the benevolent doctor or beauty store owner, and if we're not, the corrupt local official, perhaps even the souls of executed ancestors. Why do you want to visit? To see it before it's all gone... of course.Trade ReviewPraise for the author;"Speaks to universal challenges, problems facing not just Chinese villages but also alienated communities around the world." - Ian Johnson, New York Times;"It is in these stories that the universality of people's hopes, fears and frustrations really shines through." - Jo Lateu, New Internationalist; "Stunningly insightful... What makes Liang's study so compelling is the way in which it offers a glimpse of a world in which personal problems ... exist on the same level as broader social and political problems." Mark Rappolt, ArtReviewTable of Contents1. A Shining Cloud Moving Over the Skies of Wu Town 2. Drifting 3. The Holy Man, Dequan 4. Xu Jialiang Builds a House 5. Swimming in the Second River 6. The Beauty, Caihong 7. Meatheads 8. That Bright, Snowy Afternoon 9. The Exercise Ground 10. The Good Man, Lan Wei About the Author About the Translator About Sinoist Books

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Book SynopsisPart psychological thriller, part coming-of-age novel from the author of People of Abandoned Character. An absent father. A missing girl. Buried family secrets. Is the truth worth searching for? Sixteen-year-old Prue has grown up around secrets. Her gran's stern silence, her mother's teary breakdowns, her aunt's whispered assurances. But now, in the aftermath of her mum's latest 'episode', Prue's decided she's old enough for the truth. She wants to know what it is that makes the adults around her turn tight-lipped and distracted. She wants to know why her mum can't cope. Most of all, she wants to know who her dad is. Forced to spend the summer in the Shetlands with her aunt, Ruth, and new uncle, Archie, Prue arrives determined to find some answers. But she soon finds herself caught up in a web of family secrets, betrayals and – perhaps – even murder... Set during one long summer in Shetland, this is a beautifully drawn, psychologically astute novel about a young woman's search for truth, even as she realises the lies that surround her have been keeping her safe. Praise for The Gone and the Forgotten: 'What a beautiful, absorbing, emotional book... A stunning read' Louise BeechTrade ReviewWhat a beautiful, absorbing, emotional book. I was on that remote island with these characters, lost in their unfolding dramas and the barren landscape and long-past secrets. I was with young Prue on her quest to disperse the shadows of her past, and certainly identified with many of the things she had been through. A stunning read -- Louise BeechPRAISE FOR PEOPLE OF ABANDONED CHARACTER: 'This impressive debut builds up pace, pathos and intrigue superbly, with plenty of twists and turns' Woman's Weekly. 'A gripping and original take on the world's most notorious serial killer. A perfectly thrilling read for those long winter nights. Highly recommended' Adam Hamdy. 'A mistreated wife suspects her husband might be the Whitechapel killer... Compelling' Sunday Times. 'An astonishing book set in a Victorian London plagued by Jack the Ripper. Whitfield's narrator is Susannah, an ex-nurse who rushed into a rapidly souring marriage with a wealthy surgeon and starts to believe that her husband might be Leather Apron himself. I'd be amazed if it isn't dominating the shortlists come next year's awards season' -- M.W. Craven

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Book Synopsis'The stories in Black Light are grimy and weird, surprising, utterly lush... I loved every moment of this book.' Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties_____________________A black light illuminates that which the eye doesn't see, uncovering what is hidden in plain sight.In this raw, compassionate, debut collection Kimberly King Parsons casts light onto the weird, the intimate, the eerie and the sublimely beautiful with unflinching gaze and ferocious eloquence. Over twelve crackling stories, each a glorious escape hatch, she captures the bright ache of first love, the claustrophobic shadows of desire, the obsessive nature of friendship and the rapturous pull of taboo. Filled with a frenetic longing for connection, her reckless yet resilient heroines exhilarate and charm as they pursue the promise of elsewhere.With psychedelic energy and deep humanity, Black Light chews over the messiness of being alive, the unsteadiness of hope and the ecstasies of coming of age.Trade ReviewThe stories in Black Light are grimy and weird, surprising, utterly lush... I loved every moment of this book. * Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties *Exhilarating, enchanting, charming and irresistible... This is real-deal fiction. * Los Angeles Times *There is a reckless kind of heat to the tender, broken characters in these stories... Parsons is both unflinching and eloquent in her portrayals of people as they burn and rage. * Paris Review *Wild and compassionate... Every story in this collection is beyond remarkable, and Parsons proves herself to be a gutsy country-punk poet with a keen eye and a stubbornly unique sensibility. * NPR *Kimberly King Parsons' weird, intimate, enchanting debut does a service to the short story form... The writing sings at an undeniably pleasing pitch, with many of the sentences hitting such high notes that it feels breathtaking. * Lit Hub, "The Best Queer Debuts of 2019" *Just keeps getting better as you turn the pages... Wisdom and humor are so thick on the ground you could find a sentence worth quoting on every page... Comparisons have been made to Denis Johnson, Karen Russell, Carmen Maria Machado... and we'll add Angela Carter. The Angela Carter of Lubbock, Texas. * Kirkus Reviews *An incredibly satisfying reading experience... Perhaps the greatest strength of this collection lies in its weird, eerie, and sublimely beautiful details of setting and character. . . . Vividly rendered in a Texas setting that bursts off the page like Fourth of July fireworks. Black Light demands the attention of all the reader's senses. * Electric Literature *Wise and funny, Black Light takes your breath regularly with its elegant observations. * The Millions *These are stories bursting with feeling. Stories of heartbreak and humor, lust and friendship. It's the kind of book that will break your heart while reminding you of the lush possibilities of language. * BOMB Magazine *Black Light is an unshakable debut, a collection of stories that will grip you under its spell until its closing notes. Compulsively readable, this book is as much a love letter to language as it is to the natural world, the darkened corners of desire, and the absurdities of girlhood. Gutsy, loud, and so very Texas, this one moved me in a tectonic way. You'll underline every sentence. * Bustle *In lithe, lyrical prose à la Amy Hempel and Noy Holland, Parsons's short fiction parses the addictions and desires of Texan girls and women, and will break your heart even as it makes you laugh. * O, The Oprah Magazine *The bad-ass gals in these terrific stories are all attitude, and as funny and appealing in their imperfection and thwarted desire as you'll find in any fiction out there. Parsons opens and ends stories brilliantly. I just finished this book, and I'm going to read it again right away. * Amy Hempel, author of Sing to It *

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Book Synopsis'Modern marriage and its compromises ... a terrific, compassionate, compelling novel' Daily Mail Over twenty years of marriage to Max, Prue has remained a busy, contented mother and stepmother. Now, Prue's stepdaughter, Violet, has returned with her new husband from New York and, suddenly, Prue is precipitated into a secret life. As she moves between a sleepy village in Hampshire and buzzing London, Prue finds herself crossing the boundary between innocence and knowledge, exploring the line between the gluttony and surrender of desire and facing the stark realities that result. Because while marriage can be a battleground, extraordinary bargains and accommodations are often struck between people who love one another.Trade ReviewAdultery... handled with care and moral intelligence. What a good writer Buchan is. * Daily Telegraph *A powerful story: wise, observant, deeply-felt, with elements all women will recognise with a smile - or a shudder. Very highly recommended * Good Book Guide *Is Buchan the new Trollope?... A terrific new novel... Buchan's compassionate novel has an integral wisdom. * Daily Mail *The allure lies in the disparity between what its heroine is supposed to be and what she does. The intricacies of Prue's love affair keep the novel bowling along. * Sunday Times *

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Book SynopsisSHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARDSet in modern-day America and France, Renaissance Italy and Boxer Rebellion China, these stories embrace whole lifetimes, much in the manner of Alice Munro and William Trevor. Joan Silber skilfully and subtly ties one story to the next, as a minor element in one becomes a major element in the next, until the last is tied convincingly to the first. Intense in subject yet restrained in tone, they are about longings - often held for years - and the ways in which sex and religion can become parallel forms of dedication and comfort. From a wannabe dancer in contemporary New York City to missionaries in China, Ideas of Heaven showcases Joan Silber's extraordinary deftness as she illuminates love, faith and sex with great originality and profundity.Trade ReviewJoan Silber renders the thirsts and devotions of six lives with clarifying exactitude. The sometimes gentle, sometimes raw connections between these people will move you, and the ardour with which they yearn for their respective heavens will break your heart. -- Anthony Doerr[There are] books whose pieces are linked not by mere repetition of the protagonist but by genuine artfulness and imaginative necessity: Joan Silber's splendid new Ideas of Heaven, for example, in which the smallest wisp of one story will, in the next, sometimes blaze to full, unexpected life. * New York Times Book Review *Love, like these beautiful stories, offers devotion, consolation and transcendence. * Boston Globe *Luminous, stunning...The stories gather wholeness through deepening meditations on devotion...and through the startling use of language. * Chicago Tribune *Like William Trevor's writing and Alice Munro's, [Silber's] prose embraces both particularity and grandeur...Her characters remind us that we will have other lives in this world, and that nothing ever stays the same. * Washington Times *Silber covers a lot of ground in these stories, which have an epic sweep. Years pass. People grow and change. She has an ear for language, a way of turning a phrase to make it mean more than it should. * Charlotte Observer *Wonderfully evocative of time and place, this is a collection to be read and savored by all. * Booklist *Silber's wise, compassionate chronicles of longing, devotion and the search for comfort, both spiritual and physical, will move readers to contemplation and delight. * Publishers Weekly (starred review) *A standout...Silber travels the globe and centuries with ease. * Kirkus Reviews (starred review) *

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Book Synopsis'A delectable slice of dark academia' Times Crime ClubCleeve College is not for everyone...When Eve's husband is appointed housemaster at his old boarding school, Cleeve College, she gives up her life in London to join him. But the isolation and loss of autonomy threaten both her happiness and her marriage.The arrival of Fen, an enigmatic artist and wife of the new Classics teacher, is a welcome distraction. Fen doesn't play by the rules, and she and Eve enter into a game of escalating dares, disrupting the delicate balance of school life.Then, the morning after Hazard Night, a tradition that allows the students to run wild and play pranks for one day, a body is found. Someone has been murdered. And it seems everyone has something to hide...'Dark and devious, immersive, compelling ... wonderfully absorbing read' - Andrea Mara'Atmospheric and sinister'- ObserverTrade ReviewBeautifully written, Hazard Night is dark and devious, immersive, compelling, and intensely atmospheric. A wonderfully absorbing read. -- Andrea MaraAtmospheric and sinister * Observer *A delectable slice of dark academia * Times Crime Club *Drew me in from the very first page with its evocative and brilliantly realised setting. With astute characterisation, masterful prose and gripping twists, Hazard Night cements Vaughan as one of my absolute favourite psychological thriller authors. * Philippa East *Cleverly written and thoroughly enjoyable * Belfast Telegraph *I absolutely loved it. The kind of writing where you don't want to miss a single word. * Emma Curtis *An award-winning performance * The Times on Let’s Pretend *A treat ... excellent insights ... elegant prose * Daily Mail on The Favour *Intensely captivating ... will cast its spell, leaving you on edge with unexpected twists * Heat Magazine on The Favour *

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Book SynopsisCome with us on life's journey, as we travel through Europe from the Isle of Dogs and on to the Great Silk Road and back. From womb to tomb we travel together, discovering the delights of eating food, seeing what life bowls up for us and learning how to deal with it.Bon appétit! Now just tuck in!

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Book SynopsisJohn Fante is a lost gem of American literature and the man who was credited by Charles Bukowski as the inspiration for him to start writing. In a life that spanned 74 years, Fante wrote several great novels, such as Ask the Dust, and numerous screenplays. He died in 1983 from diabetes-related complications.Trapped in a small, poverty-ridden town in 1933, seventeen-year-old Dominic Molise yearns to fulfil his own dreams of becoming an American sports hero. This teenage southpaw aspires to the big leagues, big recognition and big love. He struggles, though, against the reality of his Italian parents, and comes under pressure to go into the family business. Brick-laying is not for Dominic. His father, however, seeks to pre-empt the inevitable road to failure by wanting Dominic to pick up a trowel instead of a pitcher's glove. His mother's response is to pray.At once the story of class and an individual's struggle during hard times in America, 1933 was a Bad Year is a wonderful tale of childhood and its dissipation into adulthood.Trade ReviewQuirky, stylish and often funny. * * The List * *Fante's writing has a freshness that should shame many of today's scribblers. * * Sunday Herald * *Disappointment, disaffection, alienation, anomie and angst are the stock-in-trade of the cult writer, and John Fante is a fine example. * * The Times * *Fante had a major effect upon me. Fante was my god. -- Charles Bukowski

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Book SynopsisThis is where the novel has a nervous breakdown. Anna Noon is a twenty-year-old student with a taste for perverse sex involving an enigmatic older man and a ventriloquist's dummy. Anna lives in Aberdeen and her sex life revolves around the ancient stone circles in the region.The sublime grandeur of the stones provides a backdrop against which Anna is able to act out her provocative psychodramas.Trade ReviewWhat a strange and marvelous novel. * * The Times * *I really don't think anyone who is at all interested in the study of literature has any business not knowing the work of Stewart Home. * * London Review of Books * *The stuff of which cults are made. * * Time Out * *Stewart Home is one of our most important and interesting novelists. His work has been termed 'avant-guard', but it is much more ambitious than that, as honest as it is unique. This novel will confuse and amuse an leave you wondering what it was all about, and then it will draw you back to the beginning to try to find out. The more twisted and unreal his writing, the more confusing and contradictory his opinions, the more in touch with reality Home seems to become. -- John King * * New Statesman * *

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Book SynopsisA beautiful collection - charming, witty and touching - these stories give voice to a variety of different characters: from the little girl who wants to look 'subtle' for her father's funeral, a child who has an email pen pal on Jupiter and an old lady who becomes a star through 'zimmerobics'.Often writing in a vibrant Glaswegian vernacular, Donovan deftly gives her characters authenticity with a searing power, aided and abetted by tender subtlety.Trade ReviewNot since Alan Spence came on the scene has anyone written better about childhood and her richly expressive Scots is neither forced nor fey. A page-turner to make you laugh and cry. -- Donny O'Rourke * * Scotsman * *Hieroglyphics conjures up spellbinding stories of childhood and change in voices so vibrant they leave you speechless. -- Willy Mally * * Sunday Herald * *Hieroglyphics and Other Stories is Donovan's excellent debut collection . . . Donovan illuminates exactly the dislocations and intensifications that occur within a relationship, whether between lovers or mother and child. * * Daily Telegraph * *

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Book Synopsis'Keane has a sharp eye, but a compassionate one' GUARDIAN 'I admired many authors. But Molly, I loved' DIANA ATHILL 'Miss Farrell's genius lies in her remorselessness . . . deliciously funny' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW Jessica and Jane have been living together for six months and are devoted friends - or are they? Jessica loves her friend with the cruelty of total possessiveness; Jane is rich, silly, and drinks rather too many brandy-and-sodas.Watching from the sidelines, their friend Sylvester regrets that Jane should be 'loved and bullied and perhaps even murdered by that frightful Jessica', but decides it's none of his business. When the Irish gentleman George Playfair meets Jane, however, he thinks otherwise and entices her to Ireland where the battle for her devotion begins.Trade ReviewKeane has a sharp eye, but a compassionate one * Guardian *Keane's distinctive blend of elegant savagery and deep affection . . . its human relationships tortured like bonsai by good form, its open-hearted, sensual passion for horses, dogs and landscape * Evening Standard *I admired many authors. But Molly, I loved -- Diana AthillThe very best of AngloIrish writing -- Clare BoylanMiss Farrell's genius lies in her remorselessness . . . deliciously funny * New York Times Book Review *Her books are witty, sardonic, human comedies, edged by black humour, and, like all good comedies, sadness and pathos lie close to the glittering surface -- Polly DevlinA writer of genius * Wall Street Journal *Keane has a sharp eye, but a compassionate one * GUARDIAN *Her books are witty, sardonic, human comedies, edged by black humour, and, like all good comedies, sadness and pathos lie close to the glittering surface * POLLY DEVLIN *Miss Farrell's genius lies in her remorselessness ... deliciously funny * NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW *The very best of AngloIrish writing * CLARE BOYLAN *

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Book SynopsisFrom the No. 1 bestselling author of Watch Over Me, the million copy selling author Daniela Sacerdoti returns to the magical and atmospheric Glen Avich in the Scottish Highlands.Inary Monteith's life is at a crossroads. After a stolen night with her close friend Alex, she's just broken his heart by telling him it was all a terrible mistake. Then she has to rush home from London to the Scottish Highlands when her little sister's illness suddenly worsens – in returning she must confront the painful memories she has been trying so hard to escape.Back home, things become more complicated than she could ever have imagined. There's her sister's illness, her hostile brother, a smug ex she never wants to see again and her conflicted feelings about Alex in London – and a handsome American she meets in Glen Avich. On top of that, she mysteriously loses her voice but regains a strange gift from her childhood – a sixth sense that runs in her family. And when a voice from the past keeps repeating "Take me home," she discovers a mystery that she knows she must unlock to set herself free.Perfect for fans of Amanda Prowse, Dorothy Koomson and Susan Lewis, Take Me Home is a beautiful story of love, loss, discovering one's true abilities and, above all, never forgetting who you really are. What readers have to say about Take Me Home:"The contemporary romance is beautifully balanced with elements of mystery and endearing characters that both break and capture the heart. A stunning talent, Sacerdoti writes beautiful fiction that feeds the soul."– Shari Low, Daily Record"Daniela Sacerdoti is fast becoming one of my favourites – and here she has written another extraordinary and beautiful story."– The Sun"This is one of the most emotional stories I think I've read... Just completely beautiful!"– Kim the Bookworm"A beautifully written, emotionally engaging narrative following Inary on a journey of loss, trauma and love … I can’t recommend this book enough."– Compelling Reads (5/5)"It has been a very long time, if ever, that I have read a book so beautifully written and been so absolutely spellbound."– Room for Reading (5/5)"A truly beautiful story; it’s gripping and it’s moving. And it will leave you wanting more from Daniela Sacerdoti."– Book Love BugPraise for Daniela Sacerdoti:"Heartwarming and mysterious with great atmosphere."– Kate Forde on Keep Me Safe"Heartwarming and intriguing."– Dani Atkins on Keep Me Safe"The author, in her first novel, Watch Over Me, achieves what more experienced novelists always hope to. In Glen Avich she creates a world you wish you didn’t have to leave."– The Scots Magazine"An absolute joy to read, the story is engaging, the characters are believable and the writing is lovely... is definitely a book to add to the summer reading list, and one that you won’t be able to put down."– The Press and Journal on Set Me Free

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Book SynopsisSisters Ella and Roberta O'Callaghan live in separate wings of their crumbling Irish mansion. They haven't spoken for decades, torn apart by a dark family secret from their past, and only communicate through the terse and bitter notes they leave for each other in the hallway.Debbie, an American woman, is searching for her birth mother. She has little time left but as she sets out to discover who she really is and what happened to her mother, she is met by silence and lies at the local convent.With the bank threatening, Ella tries to save the family home by opening a café in the ballroom much to Roberta's disgust. And when Debbie offers to help out in the café, the war between the sisters intensifies. But as Debbie finally begins to unravel the truth, she uncovers an adoption scandal that will rock both the community and the warring sisters.Powerful and poignant, The Ballroom Café is a moving story of love lost and found.PRAISE FOR THE BALLROOM CAFÉ'Secrets emerge, there's a whopper of a twist and this unabashed tear-jerker ends with a well-earthed, well-calculated emotional finale.'THE IRISH TIMES'A moving tale of loss, love and redemption.'BELLA MAGAZINE'Deftly written, moving and courageous.'THE SUNDAY TIMES'Slow-marching, romantic prose draws us into an old world that is rustic, genteel, quaint...[but] scandals lie in wait.'IRISH INDEPENDENT'Highly engaging debut you will want to dive into.'SUNDAY INDEPENDENT, Ireland'A lovely first novel.'CATHY KELLY, bestselling author.'A warm and engaging story in a unique and original setting. I loved journeying through the lives of these fascinating characters. A beautifully drawn, skilfully written, well-researched novel.'KATE KERRIGAN, New York Times bestselling author of The Ellis Island Trilogy'A lovely story of two women with the courage to confront the injustices of the past, bringing light to a dark corner of Ireland's recent history.'KATHLEEN MACMAHON, bestselling author of This Is How It EndsTrade Review'A warm and engaging story in a unique and original setting. I loved journeying through the lives of these fascinating characters. A beautifully drawn, skilfully written, well-researched novel.' KATE KERRIGAN, New York Times bestselling author of The Ellis Island Trilogy 'A lovely story of two women with the courage to confront the injustices of the past, bringing light to a dark corner of Ireland's recent history.' KATHLEEN MACMAHON, bestselling author of This Is How It Ends

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Book SynopsisThe young narrator of "The Intended" is twelve when he leaves his village in rural Guyana to come to England. There, he is abandoned into social care, but with great determination and self-discipline seizes every opportunity to follow his aunt's farewell advice, 'but you must take education...pass plenty exam' and wins a scholarship to Oxford. With an upper-class white fiancee, he has unquestionably arrived, but at the cost of ignoring the other part of his aunt's farewell: '...you is we, remember you is we.' Through remembering his Guyanese childhood and youth in working class Balham, the narrator's older self explores the contradictions, the difficulties implicit in his aunt's advice and the cost to his personality of losing that past. At one level a moving semi-autobiographical novel, "The Intended" is also a sophisticated postcolonial text with its echoes of 'Heart of Darkness', its play between language registers and its exploration of the instability of identity. As an Indo-Guyanese, the narrator finds himself seen as 'Paki' by the English, and as some mongrel hybrid by 'real' Asians from India and Pakistan; as sharing a common British 'Blackness', yet acutely conscious of the real cultural divisions between Guyanese of African and Indian origins.Trade Review'Essential reading. He narrates his painful story with a deft and often humorous touch, and provides us with some startling insights into poverty-stricken Guyana and multi-cultural London' - Caryl Phillips. 'A startlingly honest first novel which turns a thematic Heart of Darkness around to illuminate a groping pilgrimage' - Wilson Harris.

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Book SynopsisA young Afro-Guyanese engineer comes to a coastal Kentish village as part of a project to shore up its sea-defences. He boards with an old English woman, Mrs Rutherford, and through his relationship with her discovers the latent violence and raw emotions present in this apparently placid village. He discovers, too, that underlying the village's essential Englishness, echoes of the imperial past resound. In the process, he is forced to reconsider his perceptions of himself and his native Guyana, and in particular to question his engineer's certainties in the primacy of the empirical and the rational. This is a richly intertextual novel which uses reference to the novels of Conrad, Wilson Harris and V.S. Naipaul's 'The Enigma of Arrival' to set up a multi-layered dialogue concerning the nature of Englishness, the legacy of Empire and different perspectives on the nature of history and reality.Trade Review'Richly layered with symbol and metaphor, Disappearance is about the brief relationship between a young Guyanese engineer and the old English woman he lodges with while building sea-defences for a cliff-top village near Hastings' Time Out. 'An electrifying array of surmises about how the imperial past has affected everyone in Britain today.' Scotsman.

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Book SynopsisWhen Teresa Craddock joins her brother Tommy on an island that is and isn't Dominica, she is in flight from life and the death of her fiancé. On the island she finds a congenial new home and rediscovers a zest for life. Indeed, when Derek Morell, the new owner of an old estate, signals an unmistakeable interest in her, Teresa is more than ready for an adventure, despite the inconvenient fact that Morell is married. But what seems to begin as a witty account of romance in a tropical setting reveals itself to be an important 'lost' work in Caribbean fiction, parallel to the work of Phyllis Allfrey and Jean Rhys. Ultimately, A Flying Fish Whispered becomes a deeply imaginative exploration of different kinds of Caribbeans.Introduction by Evelyn O'Callaghan.Elma Napier was born in Scotland in 1892 and settled in with her family at Calibishie, Dominica in 1932. She quickly became a leading literary and political personality on the island, and in 1940 became the first woman ever to be elected to a Caribbean legislature. Apart from two autobiographies, Youth is a Blunder and Winter in July, she wrote a further novel with a Dominican setting, Duet in Discord, also under the pen name of Elizabeth Garner. She died in Dominica in 1973.

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Book SynopsisBending and manipulating the linear narrative structures of conventional fiction, this stark and brutal novel--originally published in 1953--is a powerful reflection on colonial Jamaica and the condition of the urban poor, told through the voices and stories of several boldly drawn characters. Beginning with Surjue, a man arrested and imprisoned following a botched robbery, who struggles for survival within Jamaica's colonial prison, this tale bears an unflinching and distressing realism that combines poetic spirit, tragic vision, and prophetic rage, while offering an acute look at the reality the poor in 1950s Jamaica.

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Book SynopsisShortlisted for the Guyana Prize Caribbean Award 2011.Dog-Heart is a novel about the well-meaning attempt of a middle-class single mother to transform the life of a boy from the ghetto who she meets on the street. Set in present-day, urban Jamaica, Dog-Heart tells the story from two alternating points of view – those of the woman and the boy. They speak in the two languages of Jamaica that sometimes overlap, sometimes display their different origins and world views. Whilst engaging the reader in a tense and absorbing narrative, the novel deals seriously with issues of race and class, the complexity of relationships between people of very different backgrounds, and the difficulties faced by individuals seeking to bring about social change by their own actions."Diana McCaulay's debut novel Dog-Heart is a harsh and poignant tableau ... exploring the relationship between poverty, education, and crime, and tying those back to a national history of violence, violation, and wilful neglect. McCaulay, an environmental activist, submitted her then-unpublished manuscript to the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission's National Creative Writing Competition in 2008 and won the gold medal... The book is a passionate plea for child poverty alleviation couched in a laudable literary format."Lisa Allen-Agostini, Caribbean Review of Books

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Book SynopsisWhen the charismatic Isaac Shepherd returns to the island of San Christobal it is lead by an independence movement that for a time unites all the island's diverse groups – Africans, Indians and Chinese – against the colonial establishment. But each group relates in different ways to colonialism and their failure to communicate openly about those differences leads to mutual suspicions that provide their enemies with the means to destroy them. Parallel to the world of the political leaders is the tight bond between their sons, including the white son of the reactionary chief of police, and Ma Shepherd, Isaac Shepherd's mother. They are the Age and Innocence of the novel's title, though the nature of innocence is thoroughly deconstructed. In what is still one of the most insightful explorations of the nature of race and ethnicity in colonial and postcolonial societies, Lamming reaches far beneath the surface of ethnic difference into the very heart of the processes of perception, communication and coming to knowledge. In a classic novel that is tense and tragic in its denouement and throughout deeply enquiring, Lamming has written one of the half dozen most important Caribbean novels of all time.George Lamming was born in Barbados in 1927. He is the author of several of the most important Caribbean novels of all time.

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Book SynopsisWalter Castle is festering with dissatisfactions in the Laventille slum in Port of Spain. As the prospect of promotion recedes and the threat of crime and lawless and rootless youth become ever more insupportable, he begins to think of going back to the village community he grew up in. But as Lovelace shows in a series of flashbacks, the force of nostalgia is not supported by actual memory, though Walter constantly tries to deceive himself that it is. Set in a 'present' of 1956 when political change was coming to Trinidad, once Walter abandons the dream of return, he is forced to choose between becoming one of the drones who passes through life without making any mark on it, or standing up for himself in a way that only makes sense if he is engaged with others.When this, Earl Lovelace's first and politically most explicit novel, was first published in 1965, it could be seen as an astringent critique of the top-down authoritarianism of nationalist politics. Its emphasis on a world where decent people like Walter Castle feel that crime and violence is destroying the social body appears, 45 years later, to be uncomfortably contemporary.Earl Lovelace was born in 13 July 1935. He is a Trinidadian novelist, journalist, playwright, and short story writer.

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Book SynopsisIn 1970 and 1971, Wilson Harris published two short story collections that explored the myths, fables and fragments of history of the Amerindian peoples of Guyana and the Caribbean. These are brought together in the current volume. The Sleepers of Roraima, subtitled "A Carib Trilogy" focuses on the ironic fate of the Caribs, the feared conquerors of other Amerindian peoples, the cannibals of European legend, but in the present the most vanished, almost extinct of all these groups. In The Age of the Rainmakers, each of the stories focuses on one of the groups still present in Guyana: the Macusi, Arecuna, Wapisiana and Arawaks. In the absence of reliable history, and in the face of the stereotypes attached to these people (such as stoicism or a propensity for laughter), Harris makes no attempt to write conventional fictional reconstructions of an ethnographic kind, but subjects the fragments of tribal lore to imaginative revision. His stories work towards the discovery of what is "original" in the sense of primordial in these narratives, in discovering such common patterns as the loss of innocence, the connections between sacrifice and transcendence, or even the shared identities of cannibal and Eucharistic consumption.

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Book SynopsisFrom the 1930s to the new century, Doux Thibaut, one of Merle Collins' most memorable characters, negotiates a hard life on the Caribbean island of Paz. As a child there is the shame of poverty and illegitimacy, and there are the hazards of sectarianism in an island divided between Catholic and Protestant, the rigidity of a class and racial system where, if you are black, your white employer is always right—and only the ladies live upstairs. Doux confronts all such challenges with style and hidden steel.We leave Doux as an old lady moving between the homes of her children in Boston and New York, wondering whether they and her grandchildren really appreciate what her engagement with life has taught her. In these tender and moving stories, Merle Collins demands that we do not forget such lives. If ghosts appear in several of the later stories, they are surely there to warn that amnesia about the past can leave disturbed and restless spirits behind.In addition to the Doux stories, this collection restores to print an earlier 'Paz' story, Rain Darling, and their juxtaposition contrasts two very different responses to the hazards of life.Merle Collins is Grenadian. She is the author of two novels, a collection of short stories and two previous collections of poetry. She teaches Caribbean literature at the University of Maryland.

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Book SynopsisThe stories in this collection move around in time and place, but linked by the experiences of the descendants of a Jamaican family of mixed Indian and African heritage. From Roaring River in rural Jamaica in 1908 where the descendants of African slaves make connections with new arrivals from Calcutta to work in the sugar cane fields, to Southall in 2013, where the Millers live alongside newer migrants from India, The Ice Migration is a poetic exploration of movement as central to the human condition, from the ancestors of the vanished Tainos in Jamaica who crossed the Behring Straits 40,000 years ago, who linger in spirit, to Tutus who is driven to separation from her family, to the constancy of moving on and ultimately return to Roaring River. The people of Jacqueline Crooks’ stories are deeply enmeshed in their African/Indian Jamaican world of dreams, visions, duppies and spiritual presences that connect them across time and place. What they discover beyond the strangeness of change of place and the hostilities they encounter is that life remains defined by its common crises – of birth, the complications of sexuality, sickness, old age, and death – and the comforts of food, stories and memory.

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Book SynopsisIndira Gabriel, recently abandoned by her lover, Solomon, embarks on a project to reinvigorate a dilapidated bar into something special. In this funny, sexy, sometimes painful and bittersweet novel, Barbara Jenkins draws together a richly-drawn cast of characters, like a Trinidadian Cheers.Meet Bostic, Solomon’s boyhood friend, who is determined to keep the bar as a shrine; I Cynthia, the tale-telling Belmont maco ; KarlLee, the painter with a very complicated love-life; fatherless Jah-Son; and Fritzie, single mum and Indira’s loyal right-hand woman. At the book’s centre is the unforgettable Indira, with her ebullience and sadness, her sharpness and honesty, obsession with the daily horoscope and addiction to increasingly absurd self-help books. In this warm, funny, sexy, and bittersweet novel, Barbara Jenkins hears, like Sam Selvon, the melancholy behind “the kiff-kiff laughter”, as darkness from Indira’s past threatens her drive to make a new beginning.

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Book SynopsisEddie Wade has recently returned from the US oilfields. He is determined to sink his own well and make his fortune in the 1920s Trinidad oil-rush. His sights are set on Sonny Chatterjee’s failing cocoa estate, Kushi, where the ground is so full of oil you can put a stick in the ground and see it bubble up. When a fortuitous meeting with businessman Tito Fernandez brings Eddie the investor he desperately needs, the three men enter into a partnership. A friendship between Tito and Eddie begins that will change their lives forever, not least when the oil starts gushing. But their partnership also brings Eddie into contact with Ada, Tito’s beautiful wife, and as much as they try, they cannot avoid the attraction they feel for each other. Fortune, based on true events, catches Trinidad at a moment of historical change whose consequences reverberate down to present concerns with climate change and environmental destruction. As a story of love and ambition, its focus is on individuals so enmeshed in their desires that they blindly enter the territory of classic Greek tragedy where actions always have consequences.Trade Review"Based on a real-life tragedy, Fortune is a magnificently absorbing tale of passion, greed and the misplaced energies that cause environmental as well as personal ruin." The Guardian"Fortune is a fascinating portrait of Trinidad, an island that is beautiful but poor, troubled and full of danger. Amanda Smyth builds the love-triangle tension with patient skill."The Times

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Book SynopsisColonial Countryside is a book of commissioned poems and short stories produced by ten global majority writers featuring National Trust houses with significant colonial histories. This includes properties whose owners engaged in the slavery business, in colonial administration or who were involved with the East India Company or British rule in India. Historians have accompanied these pieces with commentaries detailing the evidence upon which each creative commission was based. The book ends with a photo essay by the project’s commissioned photographer, Ingrid Pollard, the Turner Prize shortlisted artist who has pioneered critical interventions into the supposed whiteness of the British countryside. Peter Kalu’s story gives an account of Richard Watt of Speke Hall reflecting on his Jamaican experiences; Karen Onojaife’s story is set in Charlecote Park where a once-favoured Black page finds himself cut adrift; Jacqueline Crooks’ magical realist tale brings together an abused Indian princess and enslaved African employed in the mahogany trade; Ayanna Lloyd Banwo has written about Diego, the Spanish-speaking African who became Drake’s closest confidante; Masuda Snaith’s short story cycle tracks the cross-currents of empire across Lord Curzon’s Kedleston Hall; Maria Thomas’s account of Penrhyn Castle links past and present. It is a gothic tale of history biting back. Malachi’s story features a young Black man who dates a white girl with a taste for country house visiting, including Calke Abbey. Other contributions include poetic meditations on artefacts to be found in country houses. Hannah Lowe reflects on the taste for Chinoiserie, Seni Seneviratne gives voice to the enslaved children trapped within the frames of 18 th century art and Andre Bagoo makes connections between William Blathwayt of Dyrham Park and two stands featuring kneeling African men, brought to the house by his uncle in the seventeenth century.

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Book SynopsisLife in Wuhan and British Guiana is vividly evoked in this novel, told mainly through letters. Amidst the crumbling Chinese feudal system, and life under British colonial rule, the novel's characters seek personhood and interdependence.

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Book SynopsisLike his father before him, Octavio runs the Notre Dame bakery and knows the secret recipe for the perfect Parisian baguette. But, also like his father, Octavio has never mastered the art of reading and his only knowledge of the world beyond the bakery door comes from his own imagination. Just a few streets away, Isabeau works out of sight in the basement of the Louvre, trying to forget her disfigured beauty by losing herself in the paintings she restores and the stories she reads. The two might never have met, but for a curious chain of coincidences involving an impoverished painter, a jaded bookseller, and a book of fairytales, lost and found... Evocative, romantic, and wise, this is a magical novel about the power of stories - to help us find enchantment, freedom, and sometimes even love.

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Book SynopsisWhen Rachel sets off alone for her mother's isolated country house, she promises herself that the business of packing up and selling will only take a couple of weeks, and then she'll be home again, and back to normal. But from the moment she steps through the front door, Rachel feels that the house contains more than she had expected: along with the memories of her mother, there is something else, a presence - not quite tangible - trying to make itself felt. As Rachel struggles to put her mother's affairs in order, she grows ever more convinced that the house holds a message for her. Can the ghosts of the past be forcing their way into the present, or is Rachel really beginning to lose her mind?Trade Review* Praise for Jo's previous novels: 'Powerfully moving' TLS; 'Beautifully written and constructed - both disturbing and entirely convincing' Bernard O'Donoghue; 'An impressive and arresting debut - The usual patronising praise-word for the successful first novel is 'promising' but [Baker] doesn't just promise, she delivers.' Niall Griffiths

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Book SynopsisAt the turn of the twentieth century, Arctic explorer Edward Mackley sets out to reach the North Pole and vanishes into the icy landscape without a trace. He leaves behind a young wife, Emily, who awaits his return for decades, her dreams and devotion gradually freezing into rigid widowhood. A hundred years later, on a sweltering mid-summer's day, Edward's great-grand-niece Julia moves through the old family house, attempting to impose some order on the clutter of inherited belongings and memories from that ill-fated expedition, and taking care to ignore the deepening cracks within her own marriage. But as afternoon turns into evening, Julia makes a discovery that splinters her long-held image of Edward and Emily's romance, and her husband Simon faces a precipitous choice that will decide the future of their relationship. Sharply observed and deeply engaging, The Still Point is a powerful literary debut and a moving meditation on the distances - geographical and emotional - that can exist between two people.

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Book SynopsisBrixton, twenty years after the race riots. Teenager Dennis Huggins drifts into the easy, dangerous life of the shotta - or drug dealer - and discovers that, hard as the struggle for respect on the streets is, the struggle for love is harder still. At least Dennis has involved parents looking out for him; too many of his friends drift through life with no positive influences or moral code; their only 'family' their fellow dealers. Wheatle brilliantly evokes the temptations of the thug life for young black men growing up in London's 'Dirty South' - this is a fast, compelling novel that offers no easy answers, but refuses to shy away from asking the difficult questions.Trade ReviewA slice of black South London that is authentic, witty and gritty. * The Times *Alex Wheatle writes from a place of honesty and passion with the full knowledge and understanding that change can only happen through words and actions. * Steve McQueen *Refreshing... empowered with a blistering narrative voice, filled with the anger and desperation of marginalised youth... Wheatle is a sharp-eyed observer * Guardian *Alex Wheatle is an inspirer. He sheds light in dark places so that we might see the unseen and hear the unheard. He is a vital writer. He is a prince among men. Long may he reign. * Lemn Sissay *A thoughtful novel. Part love story, part social commentary. * New Nation *

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Book SynopsisSeymour isn't cool, but he isn't a geek either. He's a lonely, obedient 8th grade loser at Glendale, a second tier prep school in Manhattan. His chubbiness has recently earned him the nick name "Chunk Style" and he has resigned himself to a life of isolation. All of this is about to change. After successfully getting himself expelled from every reputable school in the country, Elliot Allagash, the arrogant heir of America's largest fortune, finds himself marooned at Glendale. Try as he may, Elliot cannot get expelled this time; his father has donated too much money. Bitter and bored, Elliot decides to amuse himself by taking up a new hobby: transforming Seymour into the most popular student in school. An unlikely friendship develops between these two loners as Elliot introduces Seymour to new concepts, like power, sabotage and vengeance. With Elliot as his diabolical guide, Seymour gradually learns about all of the incredible things that money can buy, and the one or two things that it can't. Hilarious, ingenious and tightly plotted, Elliot Allagash reminds you what your teens were like, and why growing up is so hard to do.Trade ReviewA sharp, clever, blisteringly funny debut. -- Kate Saunders * The Times *A hilarious, high-spirited and hormone-fuelled romp through teenage angst and offbeat antics. * Monocle *A fantastically ingenious and unique approach to the tale of a turning worm. -- Imogen Russell-Williams * Guardian *Clueless for boys... suspect that, if he had a literary ancestor in mind as he charted Seymour Herson's rise, it was not Austen or [Amy] Heckerling, but Evelyn Waugh... ...studded with rococo set pieces of ruthless masculine one-upmanship... a joy to read... Open the book on the beach or by the lake, and shed a crocodile tear, if you can muster one, for the craven ambition of youth. -- Liesl Schillinger * The Daily Beast *I found Simon Rich's first novel, about an evil teenage billionaire, to be suspenseful and hilarious. I am so glad I don't have to lie in this blurb like I usually do -- Judd Apatow, Producer of SuperbadI am a big fan of Simon Rich's first two books, which were wonderful pupu platters of absurdist comedy. And now comes his first novel, which is one of the funniest books about high schoolers since The Catcher in the Rye. We all must pray that Simon Rich won't move to New Hampshire and become a recluse who spends his time reading Eastern philosophy. Because we need more books from this guy -- A. J. Jacobs, author of The Year of Living BiblicallyFellow high school losers, use your video game money to buy this book! Simon Rich will make you relive the dread, the hilarity, and the insanity of those formative years like no one else. Open at your own peril! -- Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story, Absurdistan and The Russian Debutante's HandbookImaginative premises abound. . . . As unpredictable as YouTube, as in your face as MySpace * Publishers Weekly *Rich is always funny, and he nails the bogus solemnity of high-school social politics. A high-school romp that John Hughes should be so lucky to direct * Kirkus Reviews *An unfailingly funny and compulsively readable mix of sweet and sour that will leave readers hoping for another helping * Booklist *Praise for Simon Rich: Hilarious. Open this book anywhere, begin reading, and you will laugh -- Jon StewartSavagely funny * New York Times *Funnyman Simon Rich gives Pygmalion a makeover in his debut novel, Elliot Allagash. -- Elissa Schappell * Vanity Fair *Simon Rich's absurdist approach to the underdog archetype makes for a hilarious and heartwarming romp. * USA Today *A teenage billionaire collides with a high school loner in Rich's amusing look at growing up. Diabolical Elliot Allagash decides to turn loser Seymour into the most popular kid at school, with delightful consequences. -- Robert Chilver * Waterstone's Books Quarterly *A hilariously satiric novel peppered with innovative anecdotes... the comedy is fast-paced and enthralling... laugh-out-loud... While many find it difficult to translate their comedy from the stage to the page, Rich demonstrates that not only is he capable of doing so, he's good at it too. -- Emma Langman * The List *If ever a book seemed custom-made for adaptation into a successful teen movie, the debut novel from Saturday Night Live writer Simon Rich is it. The plot is like that of the greatest film John Hughes never made: less Ferris Bueller's Day Off, more Ferris Bueller's Adolescence Off... a winning comic formula. Peppered with riotous teen angst - and effortlessly readable - this is a novel that one consumes like a pleasantly tangy packet of crisps. -- Tom Cox * Daily Mail *If you love teen flicks like Mean Girls and Clueless, welcome to their literary equivalent. Cool, smart and laugh-out-loud funny. * Heat *An excellent novel from a rising comedic star. -- Julian Fleming * Sunday Business Post *Rich is intimately familiar with the subject, and nails everything. The novel is assured, deft in its rendering of teen relationships and, perhaps more remarkably, funny without resorting to the kind of gross-out humour common in this sort of setting. All laughs and no barfs, it's a breezy read. -- Alex Rayner * Guardian *

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Book Synopsis"The Middlesteins had me from its very first pages" - Jonathan Franzen Edie and Richard have been married for over thirty years, living in the Chicago suburbs. Everyone who knew them-even their own children Robin and Benny-agreed that Edie was a tough woman to love, but no one expected Richard to walk out on her, especially not in her condition. Edie is fifty-nine years old, she weighs 300 pounds, and her doctors have told her she'll die if she doesn't stop eating. As Richard is shut out by the family and seeks solace in the world of internet dating, Robin is dragged back from the city and forced to rebuild a relationship with her mother. Meanwhile Benny and his neurotic wife Rachelle try to take control of the situation. But have any of them stopped to think about whether Edie really wants to be saved? Written with sly humour, warmth and great insight, The Middlesteins is a novel about what it means to be part of a family.Trade ReviewThe Middlesteins had me from its very first pages -- Jonathan FranzenFamily ties are anything but simple, and the joy of this book lies in Attenberg's merciless, tender, often brilliantly funny peeling back of the layers of history. Sublime. -- Kate Saunders * Daily Mail *Flows like double cream ... Like the best culinary confections, Attenberg's prose is complex, bitter as well as tender * Sunday Telegraph *Blazing, ferocious and greathearted ... The Middlesteins will blow you away -- Lauren GroffAttenberg makes her characters' thoughts - Richard and Benny in particular - seem utterly real, and her wry, observational humor often hits sideways rather than head-on ... [A] wonderfully messy and layered family portrait * Kirkus *The Middlesteins, the novel, is great literature: warm, tragic, funny and deeply, complexly, entirely human. -- Stefan Merrill BlockThis gem of a book is swift, moving and brutally honest, but it has a family-centric moral at its heart: Without family, we are nothing. * New York Post *Attenberg is superb at mocking the cliches of middle-class life by giving them the slightest turn to make people suddenly real and wholly sympathetic. * Washington Post *Attenberg evokes memorable moments of authentic sadness and tenderness while thoughtfully and comically examining the question of what we inherit from our families. In the case of the Middlesteins, it is many things, including their sometimes-enduring love for each other. * San Fransisco Chronicle *Edie pulses with life no matter how close she seems to dying, and her character is emblematic of the tough compassion Attenberg exhibits throughout the novel. * Chicago Tribue *The Middlesteins is a marvel. * Molly Ringwald *The Middlesteins is an absolute pleasure. * Francesca Segal *Attenberg has the Tolstoyan gift for creating life on the page. Sometimes all she needs to capture a soul is a couple of sentences. But the pleasure she takes in these people goes beyond compassion...When Attenberg shows us the world through their eyes, they're not just interesting and sympathetic; they're a treat to be with. * Business Week *A wonderfully messy and layered family portrait. * Publishers Weekly *The Middlesteins is a tender, sad and funny look at a family and their mother. In fact, it's so readable, it's practically edible. * NPR *Throughout this poignant novel, the characters wrestle with two defining questions: What do we owe each other after a life together? What do we owe ourselves? * O Magazine *The Middlesteins masterfully reveals the emotional landscape of one family's unusual connections and disconnections - and allows the hope that different connections may take place. Just another quirky family story? Anything but. * Shelf Awareness *Kinetic with hilarity and anguish, romance and fury, Attenberg's rapidly consumed yet nourishing novel anatomizes our insatiable hunger for love, meaning, and hope. * Booklist *Jami Attenberg has a gift for making you sympathize with each and every one of her characters. The result is a rich family portrait that's sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes hilarious, and gripping all the way through. The Middlesteins are every bit as complex and contradictory as your family, or mine. I'm still thinking about them long after I turned the final page. * J. Courtney Sullivan *I couldn't help absolutely devouring The Middlesteins. This smorgasbord of a book about food, family, love, sex, and loss is like the Jewish The Corrections, yet menschier and with a heart-and it's hilarious! Also, it made me add more cinnamon to a pie I was baking. You'll understand why once you read it. * Jenna Blum *The Middlesteins is a truly original American novel, at once topical and universally timeless. Jami Attenberg has created a Midwestern Jewish family who are quintessentially familiar but fiercely, mordantly idiosyncratic. This novel will make you laugh, cry, cringe in recognition, and crave lamb-cumin noodles. This is a stunningly wonderful book. * Kate Christensen *A comedy of manners, its dark moments alleviated by small epiphanies and snatched moments of joy * Jewish Chronicle *Attenberg writes well, with economy and a welcome lack of sentimentality * Financial Times *Funny, eccentric ... warm and profound * Red *Moving, hilarious * Observer *This epic tale of marriage, family and addiction is full of humour and heart * Good Housekeeping *Superb ... a great storyteller * Evening Standard *A complex confection, bittersweet and tender * Sunday Telegraph *Superb ... Attenberg is a great storyteller * Scotsman *

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Book SynopsisKenneth Buthlay's edition of A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle is widely considered to be the best edition of all and provides extensive commentary and notes, taking the reader through MacDiarmid's complex and often opaque use of language. The drunk man lies on a moonlit hillside looking at a thistle, jaggy and beautiful, which epitomises Scotland's divided self. The man reflects on the fate of the nation, the human condition in general and his own personal fears.

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Book SynopsisSpiritualist and extortionist Patrick Seton is coming up for trial. He’s been accused of forgery, and suddenly West London’s bachelors are all in a tizzy. Described by Evelyn Waugh as the ‘cleverest and most elegant of all Mrs Spark’s clever and elegant books’, The Bachelors is a biting comedy of English manners. This is one of the 22 novels written by Muriel Spark in her lifetime. All are being published by Polygon in hardback Centenary Editions between November 2017 and September 2018.Trade Review'As I entered my teens, I developed a taste for more arch, snappy writing and discovered the joys of Muriel Spark. Wisdom and wit — ideal for an impressionable youth finding his way in the world' -- Julian Clary * Daily Mail *

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Book SynopsisYou can’t change your past. You can only use the experiences you live through to make your future better, wiser. Anna and her best friend George meet every week to remember, to sigh, to laugh, to reminisce about their moments of glory, guilt and mischief and share their sorrows over a glass or three of wine. The things they’ve done still make them blush. Anna wanted to be a poet – a famous poet. George left home in a childish rage and years later returned with her baby. When Anna is asked to look after the boy across the road for a few hours each week, she isn’t sure. She doesn’t really do children. But she takes the job on and, gradually, a child’s view of her world shows her a different place. George remembers a flat she stayed in when she ran away from home. It had the kitchen of all kitchens and, oh, how she’d love to see it again. Anna sets out to see if it still exists and discovers a cookbook full of recipes, intimates notes and drawings from George’s life. Does all this mark an ending or the beginning of something new and marvellous for Anna and George?Trade Review'It rings so true, Dewar evoking the preoccupations of age with a quiet authority… grounded in an awareness that experience and wisdom are qualities that are always hard-won' * Herald *'Under the surface there is a deep well of triumphs, romance, tragedy and loss ...[Anna’s verse is] sometimes profound and beautiful, sometimes comic' * The Scotsman *'Advancing age may have rendered Anna and George invisible to the world, but so well drawn are they that readers across the generations will be attracted to these golden pals ... Lines lightly laced with pathos combine to pack a punch so powerful they often leave readers reeling' * Sunday Post *'Funny and sweet but not overly sentimental, fans of Gail Honeyman will love this warm exploration of love and life' * Bookseller *

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Book SynopsisBestowed at birth with two gifts, an ivory flute and a bag of silver and gold coins, a young girl wanders through time. She is destined to pursue the dragon of war and before he consumes the world in flames, subdue him not with violence but music. Moving across the battlefields from East to West, the girl bears witness to the suffering and brutality of war throughout history ...

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Book SynopsisGeorge Mackay Brown was a master of the short story form and produced a steady stream of short fiction collections, starting with A Calendar of Love (1967) and include A Time to Keep (1969) and Hawkfall (1974), as well as his poetry collections and novels. In this selection, edited and introduced by Malachy Tallack, we explore the author’s Orkney and the ups and downs of the crofters and fishermen there. These magical stories, drawn from ancient lore and modern life, strip life down to the essentials.Trade Review'New editions of his poetry and short stories, published to mark his centenary, show his spirituality and extraordinary gift for 'involved detachment'' * The Spectator *'Malachy Tallack and Kathleen Jamie do an excellent job in editing these collections for the centenary of MacKay Brown's birth. They choose both poems and stories that show the appeal and strength of his writing' -- Donald Murray * Stornoway Gazette *'Tallack writes beautifully about living on the edge of the world; he understands islands, the way they are silent and also impossibly loud and full. He comes at Brown with real empathy. … For newcomers to George this collection is a good introduction' -- Morag Macinnes * The Tablet *

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Book Synopsis'Plakos is a strange place, for the tides of civilisation and progress seem to have left it high and dry. It is a relic of old days, full of wild beliefs and pagan habits.' Young Englishwoman Kore Arabin has inherited a remote Greek island, Plakos, from her unscrupulous father, who was reviled by the locals. The superstitious islanders blame Kore for every minor mishap and natural disaster, and they are about to sacrifice her as a witch in the sacred ground called 'The Dancing Floor'. Sir Edward Leithen and his acquaintance Vernon Milburne must save her. The Dancing Floor is one of Buchan's most intriguing novels – a love story, a dramatic thriller and a tale of the clash between paganism and Christianity. With an introduction by Robert Hardy. This edition is authorised by the John Buchan Society.

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Book SynopsisMorris Magellan wakes one morning to find himself stuck in a corporate job and living the suburban dream with a wife and two children, except this dream feels like a nightmare. Out of his depth and starting to drift from reality, we meet Morris at the precipice. Bit by bit he is losing his struggle with addiction – he just doesn’t know it yet. His only solace and escape from suburban family life and corporate duties is music and alcohol. His life is soundtracked with symphonies and concertos, every note, and every drink, carries him from moment to moment hoping to salvage something of himself before that too slips from his grasp. Harrowing but compellingly written, with humour and compassion, The Sound of My Voice is a stylistic masterpiece that presents conflict between a man’s cowardice and cruelty, and a desperate attempt to recover his humanity.Trade Review'Playful, haunting and moving, this is writing of the highest quality . . . One of the most inventive and daring novels ever to have come out of Scotland' -- Ian Rankin'One of the classic post-war Scottish novels. It’s simply a roaring success on all levels; it’s a genius piece of fiction' -- Irvine Welsh'A profound and beautifully written study of human fragility in the face of the brutalism of modern life' -- James Robertson'A stylistic masterpiece . . . chilling but extremely enjoyable' * Daily Mail *'Compulsively readable . . . a cleverly orchestrated unique work of fiction' * Herald *'Brilliantly-structured short novel . . . superb writing' * The Scotsman *'Deserves to be talked about in the same breath as Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day' * Metro *

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Book Synopsis'Luminous' Ian McEwan 'Astonishing' Economist 'Mesmerising and prophetic' Arifa Akbar, Independent It's 1948 and the villagers of Khirbet Khizeh are about to be violently expelled from their homes. A young Israeli soldier who is on duty that day finds himself battling on two fronts: with the villagers and, ultimately, with his own conscience. Haunting and heartbreaking, Khirbet Khizeh, now considered a modern Hebrew masterpiece, offers a wrenchingly honest view of one of Israel's defining moments. 'So incendiary and eloquent that one has to put it down every few pages... How often can you say of a harrowing, unquiet book that it makes you wrestle with your soul?' The TimesTrade ReviewExtraordinary ... Khirbet Khizeh is a tribute to the power of critical thought to register the injustices of history ... Khirbet Khizeh is the story which, with the least ambivalence, offers to official Zionist history its strongest, unanswerable, counterpoint. The translation is long overdue. In lyrical, haunting prose - evocatively rendered into English by Nicholas de Lange and Yaacob Dweck - the narrator describes what was done to the Palestinians in 1948 -- Jacqueline Rose * Guardian *It's subject is so painful, its execution so charged, so wildly beautiful, its moral ambivalence so incendiary and eloquent that one has to put it down every few pages ... the mighty rush of its prose, with its creative syntax, its long, fibrous sentences, its combination of impassioned, unbridled lyricism and colloquial speech, is exhilarating ... How often can you say of a harrowing, unquiet book that it makes you wrestle with your soul -- Neel Mukherjee * The Times *S. Yizar's classic Khirbet Khizeh is available in a fine miniature new edition ... its original publication in 1949 was a landmark, both historically and linguistically * Jewish Chronicle *The luminous account of the clearing of an Arab village during the'48 war -- and of a protest that never quite leaves the throat of its narrator as the houses are demolished and the villagers driven from their land. It is a tribute to an open society that this novella was for many years required reading for Israeli schoolchildren. Khirbet Khizet remains painfully relevant, and the moral questioning lives on. -- Ian McEwan * Jerusalem Prize Acceptance Speech *Yizhar's extraordinary tale narrates the need, and the price, of remembering * Jacqueline Rose *Years after the tragic events it describes, Khirbet Khizeh retains its disturbing relevance ... Conveying in vivid microcosm the moral ambiguities attending Israel's establishment in 1948, [it] resonates as both historical experience and art * TLS *The entire novella, canonical in Hebrew literature, has the effect of pointing up how brutally unjust visitations of war inevitably are upon civilian populations, and how brutally coarsened soldiers must become to carry out the "operational orders" that steer, in the sanitized language of the generals and politicians who decide such things from a distance, the broad and heartless missions of armies -- Mark Kamine * The Believer *There's no false note, no generic anti-war rhetoric in Khirbet, and as long as we continue to kill one another, in the Middle East or elsewhere, Khirbet will retain its poetic relevance * Words Without Borders *Astonishing * The Economist *Sixty years on S. Yizhar's Khirbet Khizeh retains its extraordinary power ... No outline can do justice to a narrative that touches the very heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For anyone familiar with the 1948 war but reading Khirbet Khizeh for the first time, the story is both startling and uncanny in its predictive clarity -- Ian Black * Jewish Quarterly *Written by an Israeli soldier on a sortie to forcibly expel the Palestinian villagers of Khirbet Khizeh during the 1948 war, this mesmerising and prophetic testimony is just as potent today against the backdrop of continuing conflict ...The account unfolds with a magnificent, biblical simplicity, and none of its terrible beauty is lost in this shimmering translation by Nicholas De Lange and Yaacob Dweck -- Arifa Akbar * Independent *[This] poetic, anguished and uncompromising portrayal of the eviction of an Arab village was based on experience ... the lyricism of the writing has been beautifully captured by Nicolas de Lange and Yaacob Dweck -- Toby Lichtig * Times Literary Supplement *

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Book SynopsisOn a remote island in Orkney, a curiously matched couple arrive on their honeymoon. He is an eminent literature professor; she was his pale, enigmatic star pupil. Alone beneath the shifting skies of this untethered landscape, the professor realises how little he knows about his new bride and yet, as the days go by and his mind turns obsessively upon the creature who has so beguiled him, she seems to slip ever further from his yearning grasp. Where does she come from? Why did she ask him to bring her north? What is it that constantly draws her to the sea?Trade ReviewA masterpiece. It is seductive, beguiling, lureful - like a mermaid calling us into darker, deeper waters -- Scarlett ThomasLyrical and compelling... entirely original... In Orkney myth slips free from the dust and politesse of the library, and assumes a vivid, dangerous and unparaphraseable existence... Readers will be gripped from start to finish... A beautiful and poignant novel -- John Burnside * Times Literary Supplement *What begins as a familiar, almost fairytale-like narrative ends as something more fragmented, unsettling, and odd... Providing a brooding, bruised, ever-changing backdrop to all this is Orkney, the book's most compelling character of all... Breathtaking -- Chitra Ramaswamy * Scotsman *Delicate [and] haunting... With this intense, daring book, Sackville - already a writer of promise - has shown how very good she can be -- William Skidelsky * Daily Telegraph *Poetic, dreamlike and beautifully written -- Kate Saunders * The Times *Its dreamlike ambiguity is heightened by Sackville's poetic sensibility... Orkney is a haunting tale of longing and possessiveness that puts one in mind of the great literary studies of obsession -- Alastair Mabbott * Herald *The prose is rich with marine imagery, and there's a haunting atmosphere of mystery and melancholy -- Brandon Robshaw * Independent on Sunday *Sackville is one of the UK's most exciting new writers... She is a genius with her turn of phrase: deft, evocative and clever... Truly remarkable -- Lizzie Pook * Stylist *The eerily gifted Amy Sackville bring[s] mysteries to bear on the Scottish archipelago in her second novel, Orkney -- Boyd Tonkin * Independent *Sackville's second novel is strangely beautiful and absolutely beguiling, full of magical turns of phrase... It is a masterful depiction of the treacherous waters of desire -- Rebecca Morrison * Independent *Intelligent, unsettling and replete with deep dark adult magic... a joy to read -- BidishaSackville clearly has a gift for the poetic, writing beautifully of everything she touches upon -- Francesca Angelina * Sunday Times *Poetic, lyrical, lush in texture... Orkney has power -- Holly Williams * Independent on Sunday *A lilting, flowing narrative suggestive of sea rhythms... Intelligent and evocative -- Theresa Munoz * Sunday Herald *In [Sackville's] adept hands this lyrical tale of a honeymooning professor and his enigmatic young bride brings the murky maritime beauty of the remote Scottish Archipelago to life * Vogue *A haunting novel set on a beautifully described remote island of Orkney... It's like a folk ballad, full of otherworldly emotion and strange impulses -- Eithne Farry * Marie Claire *Sackville writes like a dream (in all senses), conveying both the uncanny power of love and the inscrutable heartbreak of loss * Kirkus Reviews *The intense beauty of the language beguiles the reader with its lilting poetic rhythms and we can hear the constant ebb and flow of the sea... Sackville is a great literary talent, one to watch in the future * Bookmunch *Sackville has written a rich and rhythmic book of enchantment, a book possessed and of possession... Remarkable * Words of Mercury *Sackville manages to capture something genuinely interesting about romance: that you can fall in love with someone without having a clue who they really are -- Thomas Quinn * Big Issue *Beautiful descriptive prose * Northern Echo *A remarkable achievement * Desperate Reader blog *The great power of the novel is its lyricism, which gives the bleak and inhospitable landscape an air of enchantment -- Eli Davies * Review 31 *The foreboding atmosphere that Sackville's prose creates is a joy -- Gemma Kappala-Ramsamy * Observer *As lovely as it is unsettling, a brooding, hypnotic novel that draws upon a panoply of folklore to tell a modern tale of love and obsession... Entrancing, intelligent, and as consuming as the obsessions it explores, [this] is a novel to dive into with a lungful of breath * Bookslut *[With] prose that can feel like poetry, [this] is very much a book for language-lovers... Sackville spins a beautiful web * Weekly Standard *Her prose shimmers. This reviewer would be consumed by envy were her books not such an absolute pleasure to read * Country Life *A troubling, deeply romantic tale of the difference between the feverish illusion of love and its more humdrum reality * Belfast Telegraph *Masterfully self-contained... Sackville's rare gift is for rendering the ordinary so distinctly that it becomes fantastic... the prose is so compelling one does not read to find out what happens, but to find out how it will be described -- Hannah Tennant-Moore * New York Times *Poetic, dreamlike and beautifully written -- Kate Saunders * The Times *Deeply poetic and fanciful -- Emma Hagerstadt * Independent *Exquisite * Sunday Mail (Glasgow) *

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Book SynopsisPaul and Elaine have two boys and a beautiful home, yet they find themselves thoroughly, inexplicably stuck. Obsessed with 'making things good again', they spin the quiet terrors of family life into a fantastical frenzy that careers well and truly out of control. As A.M. Homes's incendiary novel unfolds, the technicolour hues of the American good life become nearly hallucinogenic: from a strange and hilarious encounter on the floor of the pantry with a Stepford Wife neighbour, to a house-cleaning team in space suits, to a hostage situation at the school. Homes lays bare the foundations of marriage and family life and creates characters outrageously flawed, deeply human and entirely believable.

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